Overweight is known to be associated with hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and hyperglycemia. Recently, two groups of investigators have shown that the distribution of body fat can be measured by the ratio of waist to hip girth (WG/HG). Data in normal men (as opposed to obese men) are limited to residents of Goteborg born in the year 1910. Our BLSA data then offers a unique opportunity for assessing WG/HG as a risk factor. Our analyses to date have included both bivariate and multiple regression techniques to assess interrelations among age, overweight (the Body Mass Index, BMI), and WG/HG on serum cholesterol (CH), triglyceride (TG), glucose tolerance (GT), and systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Glucose tolerance analysis to date has been that obtained since 1977 using essentially the currently accepted recommended glucose dose (40 g/m2 surface area or, usually, about 75 grams). Since the distribution of TG values are log-normally distributed, analyses were made against log TG. Furthermore, the relationship of age to TG and to CH is not a simple linear one but is instead best described as an inverted U-shaped curve; it was therefore necessary to use Age and Age2 as independent variables. The results showed a very strong association of age with WG/HG. In fact even into old age, WG/HG continues to increase although the BMI decreases. There is thus apparently a continuing redistribution of body fat from periphery to core (abdomen) with aging. Also WG/HG increases directly with increasing BMI at all ages. Thus, the multiple regression techniques is essential for the determination of independent effects of these variables on the dependent variables. This analysis showed highly significant effects of fat distribution on the metabolic variables (CH, TG, and GT) but very little effect on BP. On the contrary, overweight, as judged by the BMI, had a highly significant effect on BP but not on the metabolic end-points. These results hold for young and middle-aged men and for the "young-old" (55-74 yr). The dependent risk factors in the "old-old" (75-96 yr) seem to be generally uninfluenced either by fatness or by its distribution pattern.